Margaret Bourke-White's famous photo of a bread line during the Louisville flood in 1937.

Boy prisoners exercising in a courtyard at Tothill Fields Prison, London, circa 1845. From London Labour and the London Poor, by Henry Mathew, 1849.

Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Thousands of people stood in line for up to an hour at the Chick-fil-A in Chandler, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, after Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and Fox News host, called for a national ''Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.'' The event was meant to encourage people to patronize the fast food chain after Dan Cathy, President and CEO of Chick-fil-A, who is a fundamentalist Christian, made public his views against same sex marriage, causing an outcry from political leaders and gay rights advocates.

A line of school girls standing in a classroom while boys sit behind them. 1955.

Photo: Thomas J. O'Halloran/Library of Congress

Fans of the Harry Potter books queue outside Waterstones bookstore in Piccadilly in central London on July 19, 2007, two days ahead of the release of the novel Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by British author J.K. Rowling.

Photos of people standing in line have a funny way of summing up the human condition.

Today it was the pictures of people waiting for the iPhone 5 that pointed to the power of Apple and the draw of its devices. But throughout history we’ve been able to consistently turn to photos of people queued up as a way to see what’s important.

Back in the 1930s the iconic photos of bread lines during the Great Depression demonstrated how deeply impoverished and desperate the United States had become after our financial system collapsed. The lines of immigrants queued up at Ellis Island say a lot about the foundations of our country, one of the most diverse on the planet. Photos of chain gangs help explain a penal system that often takes a pound of flesh as part of its punishment.

Images of lines also have a unique way of commenting on politics. It was the lines around Chick-fil-A that best summarized the spat between the restaurant’s supporters and those who believed it shouldn’t support anti-gay organizations. On Nov. 6 you can bet we’ll see lines of people waiting to cast their ballots.

Journalist and critic H. L. Mencken argued that human existence can be a total bore that amounts to “endless standing in line.” But standing in line doesn’t always have to be boring, as these photos demonstrate.